1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In late years, a new service model referred to as “application service” has been increasingly popularized. In one type of application services, a client computer can acquire an application software held by an application server of an application service provider (hereinafter referred to as “ASP”) accessible via a network such as the Internet, only in case of necessity, and then the acquired application software is activated and executed on the client computer.
In this type of application service, when the client computer uses a printer connected thereto via a network to print out application data which has been created using the application software acquired from the application server, the client computer has been required to re-acquire the application software so as to allow print data to be created using a printer driver associated with the client computer and then transmit the created print data to the printer via the network. That is, only for a printing operation, it has been obliged to acquire the application software from the application server and then activate the acquired software to create the print data.
The application software held by the application server on the network includes a frequently used type of business-oriented software having a small data size, such as word processing software or spreadsheet software, and various less frequently used types of management software (e.g. personnel management software, financial management software, data management software) mostly having a large data size.
Thus, even if it is intended simply to print out application data created using such large-size application software, the client computer have to spend a long time for acquiring the related application software and to bear with a resultingly extended time-period of the printing operation. In this case, the extended time-period for acquiring the application software and transmitting the print data to the printer causes an additional problem of constraining the client computer over such an extended time-period.
In addition, for each of printing operations, the application server has to transmit the related application software to the client computer and receive the application software immediately after it is returned. A resultingly increased number of transmissions/receptions causes an increased operational load in the application server. Further, a printer is generally a device having a constantly varying status. Thus, in some cases, the printer cannot carry out a print job transmitted thereto. For example, it can occur in following cases: when the printer has a member of previously ordered print jobs, the printer can accept a new print job transmitted thereto but not carry out a printing operation; the printer is in an error status; and the printer cannot accept a new print job transmitted from one client computer because it is receiving a print job from another client computer. In these cases, the printer is in the status where it cannot accept any print job. Thus, even if the application server accesses the printer via the Internet to transmit a print job, the printer can reject the receiving of the print job. This causes another problem of worthless accesses from the application server.